'Mother' sets ratings record with finale

It would have made an easy slap bet: The one-hour series finale of CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother marked the show's top-rated episode.

About 13.1 million fans tuned in Monday night, according to final Nielsen figures, eclipsing the previous record of 12.3 million set for "The Pineapple Incident," which aired in November 2005, early in the show's first season. Though the audience was smaller than for Dancing With the Stars, its young-adult crowd more than doubled ABC's dancing show and was easily tops for the night on TV.

But the premiere of Friends with Better Lives, a sitcom that followed Mother in a special 9 p.m. ET/PT slot, didn't fare as well, falling to 7.6 million and earning less than half of Mother's younger audience. Lives moves to 8:30 next week.

Many fans on social media weren't happy with the way Mother ended its nine-season run, joining a list of unhappy finale followers of such long-running series as Lost, The Sopranos, Seinfeld and Dexter.